Prediction of demand for professional sports is increasingly drawing the attention of economists. We apply linear mixed models for modeling attendance figures at Spanish professional football. We investigate economic variables, such as the price of the tickets or the size of the market, and...

This paper proposes a robust forecasting method for non-stationary time series. The time series is modelled using non-parametric heteroscedastic regression, and fitted by a localized MM-estimator, combining high robustness and large efficiency. The proposed method is shown to produce reliable...

Small area estimation is studied under a spatio-temporal Fay–Herriot model. Model fitting based on restricted maximum likelihood is described and empirical best linear unbiased predictors are derived under the model. A parametric bootstrap procedure is proposed for the estimation of the mean...

Estimation of small area means under a basic area level model is studied, using an empirical Bayes (best) estimator or a weighted estimator with fixed weights. Mean squared errors (MSEs) of the estimators and nearly unbiased (or exactly unbiased) estimators of MSE are derived under three...

A new methodology is developed for estimating unemployment or employment characteristics in small areas, based on the assumption that the sample totals of unemployed and employed individuals follow a multinomial logit model with random area effects. The method is illustrated with UK labour force...